An American Airlines flight crew encountered an unidentified flying object over New Mexico on February 21. American Airlines has confirmed the strange incident, during which a “long, cylindrical object that almost looked like a cruise missile” zipped over the Airbus A320, according to a pilot’s transmission obtained by The War Zone.
American Airlines Flight 2292 was en route from Cincinnati to Phoenix on Sunday afternoon when it came into contact with the mysterious object at approximately 37,000 feet over northeastern New Mexico. Radio interceptor Steve Douglass captured Flight 2292’s transmission on the Albuquerque Center frequency of 127.850 MHz or 134.750 MHz.
In the transmission, which you can hear below, the American Airlines pilot reported:
“Do you have any targets up here? We just had something go right over the top of us. I hate to say this, but it looked like a long, cylindrical object that almost looked like a cruise missile type of thing—moving really fast right over the top of us.”
Albuquerque Center didn’t respond to the pilot’s report because local air traffic interfered, Douglass wrote on his blog, Deep Black Horizon. American Airlines Flight 2292 safely landed in Phoenix shortly after the encounter.
American Airlines later confirmed with The War Zone the validity of the transmission:
Following a debrief with our Flight Crew and additional information received, we can confirm this radio transmission was from American Airlines Flight 2292 on Feb. 21. For any additional questions on this, we encourage you to reach out to the FBI.
When TMZ reached out to the FBI, spokesperson Frank Fisher said the Bureau is “aware of the reported incident.” He continued: “While our policy is to neither confirm nor deny investigations, the FBI works continuously with our federal, state, local, and tribal partners to share intelligence and protect the public.”
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) also released a short statement confirming the encounter:
A pilot reported seeing an object over New Mexico shortly after noon local time on Sunday, Feb. 21, 2021. FAA air traffic controllers did not see any object in the area on their radarscopes.
As The War Zone points out, New Mexico is indeed home to White Sands Missile Range, the sprawling stretch of desert where the U.S. military has long tested everything from nuclear weapons to V-2 rockets. The site is actually the birthplace of America’s space program, and today is home not just to a space capsule landing field, but the latest in weapons tech, too, from lasers to electromagnetic railguns.
But White Sands is approximately 400 miles away from the site of Sunday encounter’s west of Clayton, New Mexico, and it’s unlikely a weapon like a cruise missile could have “gone off the reservation” during a test, The War Zone’s Tyler Rogoway observes.
Scott Stearns, the chief of public affairs at White Sands, told Fox News the missile range wasn’t testing anything on Sunday. “We have no idea what it could have been or if anything similar has been sighted in that area before.”
The War Zone has dispelled the speculation that the American Airlines pilots may have seen a Learjet 60 that flew over Flight 2292. “One major issue with this theory was that this occurred about nine minutes before the radio call was supposedly made,” Rogoway writes. “In addition, the Learjet was traveling 5,000 feet above the Airbus and passed in front of it at an angle about eight miles in distance. This is not something out of the ordinary that the pilots should have reacted to in such a puzzled fashion.”
The Learjet in question flew from Salt Lake to Boca Raton without any deviations according to online tracking software. Regardless, the FAA would have known about the Learjet and where it was in time and space in relation to American Airlines Airbus when it made the radio call, especially after three days of investigation. So, barring a massive oversight in evaluating the available information, we can toss out the Learjet theory based on the FAA's official statement.
Rogoway is executing “a full FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] request on this case with the FAA” on behalf of The War Zone, he writes. In the meantime, speculation persists.
In a Reddit thread about the incident on r/UFOs, user Can_Not_Double_Dutch, who purports to be an airline pilot, provides information that raises additional questions about the “very weird” encounter:
Airline pilot here: Between 28,000'-40,000' (FL280-FL400) aircraft are in RVSM (Reduced Vertical Separation Minimum) airspace, which means crossing traffic can be + or - 1,000' from you. This airspace is highly controlled. And if another aircraft is transmitting on their Transponder code then you can see that aircraft on your TCAS (Traffic Collision system). For ATC controllers and pilots not to be able to see this UFO on any of their systems is very weird. And pilots never want to be the one to say UFO on radio.
Even if authorized to fly through military airspace the ATC controllers would say military airspace is cold. If missiles are being tested then a NOTAM (Notice to Airmen) would be issued and airspace closed off.
So I would say something was up there and passing by airlines.
Even if we don’t learn more about the bizarre object at the center of this week’s encounter, 2021 promises to be an important year for the advancement of UFO disclosure.
Last August, the Department of Defense (DoD) officially approved the establishment of an Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) Task Force (UAPTF). The task force will investigate the sightings of UAPs, also known as UFOs.